Consolidating the one health content of agricultural guidance documents in West Africa: a scoping review

Abstract

West Africa faces numerous challenges to food security, including rising human populations, climate change, (re)emerging infectious diseases, Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), and biodiversity loss. As such, the URBANE consortium is collaborating across West Africa to re-imagine food production systems that are climate-smart, nature-based, and resilient to contextually specific One Health stressors of the region. However, the documentation supporting such progress is broad. It is currently unclear how well agriculture investment plans are linked to government-produced documents such as National One Health Strategic Plans and National Action Plans on AMR. This study employed a systematic methodology to assess the availability and content of relevant agricultural guidance documents. This analysis 1) identifies 24 key agricultural and One Health document for Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Morocco. 2) An inductive approach was used to identify the common terminology used within and between One Health and agricultural document. 3) Demonstrate how One Health terminology differs between documents aimed at food production and those with wider One Health narratives. 4) Explore how such differences could silo One Health action within certain sectors, and 5) identify examples of One Health synergies across documents that could pave the way for One Health-centred agricultural reform.